Darrell Issa’s gavel up for grabs as jockeying begins

About a half-dozen lawmakers are jockeying for the gavel of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, trying to prove to their colleagues that they have the chops to probe the Obama administration and savvy to flack their findings on television.

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Issa’s term as the Obama administration’s chief inquisitor expires at the end of 2014, and unless leaders waive party rules, he won’t be eligible to keep running the committee.

It’s no wonder so many lawmakers are lining up to take his place. The Oversight chairman has jurisdiction over the flashiest topics of the day: IRS, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and Solyndra. It’s also one of the highest-profile chairmanships in the House — transforming Issa from an obscure Beltway name into a familiar face on televisions across America.

The former Transportation Committee chairman technically follows Issa in seniority, and he wants the post — badly.

“I’d like that opportunity,” he told POLITICO in a short interview. “I love it … and I think I could be effective.”

Ticking off the subcommittees he’s chaired during his 20 years on the panel — civil service, criminal justice and drug policy, and now government operations — he said it’s “very important to have an experienced leader in that position the last two years of the Obama administration.”

But Mica — known for his help in digging up the ritzy General Services Administration Las Vegas conference last year — is the first to admit that his seniority isn’t necessarily his ticket to the top.

“On the Republican side, it’s not a question of seniority; it’s a question of showing that you can do the job,” he said.

Mica will rely on his past performance as Transportation chairman to make his case for the post, he said, pointing to the massive transportation and pipeline safety reauthorizations he helped usher through during his tenure. Or the work he did to push the government into leasing the massive, vacant Old Post Office Pavilion in downtown Washington to Donald Trump to save taxpayer money.

But citing his Transportation record could have an adverse effect on his candidacy. Speaker John Boehner took Mica off the transportation reauthorization bill last year for crafting legislation that couldn’t garner enough Republican votes to pass.

Boehner’s support can be critical because the Ohio Republican gets four votes on the panel that chooses committee chairmen. But it’s not always necessary, Mica points out. Last time around, Boehner voted for someone else to lead Transportation but Mica got the gavel anyway.

An active member of the Oversight panel, Jordan heads the subpanel with jurisdiction over the IRS scandal. Known for his fiery hearing performances, he’s got a knack for questioning.

His fellow Republicans gave him kudos, for instance, for getting Eric Nordstrom, the State Department’s top security official in Libya during the Benghazi consulate attack, to say: “The Taliban is on the inside of the building.”

Nordstrom’s comment was intended to convey the vulnerability workers inside the consulate felt before the attack. The quote went viral and Republicans used the testimony to slam the Obama administration for denying security that they say could have prevented the deadly attack.

But Jordan’s past run-ins with GOP leadership could be an issue.

As former chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, he and Boehner locked horns during the July 2011 debt ceiling standoff when he vocally opposed Boehner’s legislation to increase the ceiling.

A staffer working for Jordan at the time was caught emailing outside conservative groups full lists of Republicans they could possibly whip against Boehner’s debt ceiling bill — seen as a move to undercut the speaker.